Polystyrene or Styrofoam products are widely used in the food service industry such as cafeteria's and lunch rooms for serving food and drink. Presently, in the cafeteria/lunchroom settings used Styrofoam trays and containers are disposed of by dumping the products along with the remaining food left on the product into a garbage bag and dispose of the tray and food content. Despite the suitability of Styrofoam for these purposes, the cost of its disposal along with the environmental impact has become of concern. Polystyrene has beneficial characteristics such as it is light weight and high strength; however, once used it is not easily compressed and does not have enough density to make transportation to a central recycling center economical due to the large space the un-stacked used containers and trays occupy.
Various cabinets or insulated cabinets with internal heat sources are known in the prior art, for example, there are BBQ grills, cookers or smokers, ventilating and cooling (HVAC) units, and wall ovens. Each cabinet houses a heat source and serves a purpose of efficiently heating an item for a special purpose.
One such purpose is densification of plastic, polymers, or polymer materials such as polystyrene since expanded polystyrene is a thermoplastic polymer and heat quickly causes the polymer chains to retract or shrink.
Two processes for densification of polystyrene include compression and melting. Large commercial or industrial recyclers have conveyor delivery system, large hoppers, shredders, heat sources, and compression devices to remanufacture polystyrene. However, such facilities require bulk quantities of polystyrene to be transported to the facility, require substantial space requirements for such equipment, and generate undesirable amounts of fumes.
Therefore, it is readily apparent that there is a recognizable unmet need for a polystyrene product remanufacturing apparatus and methods of use, which enables remanufacturing of large numbers of expanded polymer container, packaging, or tray at the source of the used items, such as, a single school or cafeteria, fast food restaurant or similar location having a high volume of used expanded polymer containers, packaging or trays resulting in an enormous space when un-stacked, and enables remanufacturing the expanded polystyrene into dense retracted blocks, which are efficient to transport.